If there has been an underlying theme to the chatter around the 2018 baseball season, it’s been about fixing the game.
In part, this could be attributed to Major League Baseball’s recent willingness to make changes to the rules. In recent years, MLB has taken small steps to address issues in the game, such as takeout slides, missed calls, and pace of play. Along the way, they’ve mused about more.
Which, in turn, leads to every hoser with a byline or a platform to muse about their schemes – modest, hare-brained and everything in between – to make baseball better, or to stem the changes that they perceive to be eroding the fundamentals of the game.
And what sort of hoser would I be if I didn’t get in on this action?
Here are two ideas to improve baseball that are absolutely unlikely to happen…
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Add Two More Teams … Immediately
There has been some discussion about the need for radical realignment of the league, with most proposals looking to create a more geographically sound division structure.
The hang-up with many of these realignment plans is that they aren’t workable in a 30-team league, and would be better suited to a 32-team league.
The league could then split into four eight-team divisions, or eight four-team divisions, and as Jayson Stark highlighted in an article on The Athletic earlier this season, an even number of teams in each league (along with a 154-game campaign) would make it easier to create a more balanced and sensible schedule.
That being the case, why wait?
MLB will be circumspect about adding new cities to their fold until the stadium situations are resolved in Oakland and Tampa Bay. But rather than award expansion franchises, why not begin by adding two barnstorming franchises? One could be added in the west, one in the east, with the teams split between the National and American Leagues.
The idea of a barnstorming team is somewhat of a throwback, although they have existed in independent leagues within the past decade. But for most fans, these teams would be a notable novelty for several seasons.
On the business side, each team would get at least an extra series-worth of whirring turnstiles, and the teams would be built up over several years so that when a landing spot for a team arises, there would be a ready-made organization waiting for them.
The players would have some apprehensions about playing on such wandering teams, to be sure. But the prospect of an additional 50-to-80 big league jobs would certainly soften the blow.
From the point of view of the quality of play, these teams may end up being punching bags for other franchises, although with no incentive to tank, cobbling together a team of cast-off veterans may actually result in a halfway-competitive team.
Moreover, some of the complaints raised about the current state of the game aren’t a result of the quality of play slipping, but rather, of the players now being too good. Some watering down of the talent pool after two decades without expansion would be good for the game.
Finally, supposing that MLB is the organization running these barnstorming teams, they could take a leadership role in ensuring that organizational leadership positions are filled with qualified but overlooked candidates. Women, as well as Latin Americans, African Americans and Asians, could be given more opportunity to break into the game.
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An International All-Star Break
The American League versus the National League still holds some appeal for baseball fans come mid-season. Though with interleague play and more consistent exposure to teams through multiple channels of seeing games, it’s not the novelty it once was.
Baseball still has the best all-star exhibition of any professional league, and it’s not particularly close. You can’t play baseball at half-speed, or goof off without being embarrassed on a still significant stage.
But what if the stakes were amped up even more?
I’ve made the case before that the World Baseball Classic could culminate with its semi-finals and finals being played as the mid-summer classic. This way, players would be healthy and available, and you would have three games of best-on-best competition for this title.
Barring that, an improvised tournament of four teams could also be established. It could feature the United States and the Dominican Republic as the two most prominent baseball countries, with a team representing Latin America or the Caribbean (Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Mexico) and one representing the rest of the World (Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, Netherlands, and others).
This would also allow the league to have a few more worthy representatives at the All-Star festivities, while not bloating the teams beyond reason.
The level of play and the high spirits that were exhibited at the last World Baseball Classic should not be overlooked or forgotten, and injecting that spirit into the middle of the season would certainly get baseball fans from around the world talking.
And if you were going to put on such a tournament, wouldn’t Toronto make a natural host city for the inaugural version?
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